1965 Topps #285 Ron Hunt
About Ron Hunt
Card #285, a series-4 issue, reports the best average of Hunt's Mets years: .303 in 127 games in 1964, tops among New York's regulars, with 11 more pitches worn. The players did the All-Star voting then, and they made him the National League's starting second baseman that July at Shea Stadium, 172 votes to Bill Mazeroski's 52. Batting eighth, he singled to left off Dean Chance in his first at-bat and finished 1-for-3. The night before, he had smuggled his grandfather Walter Gronemeyer -- the man who taught him the game in a St. Louis back alley -- into the empty park and had the grounds crew turn the lights on.
Ron Hunt signed with the Milwaukee Braves as an amateur free agent in 1959 and was sold to the New York Mets on October 11, 1962. A right-handed-hitting second baseman born in St. Louis, he won the Mets' second-base job as a rookie and finished runner-up to Pete Rose for the 1963 National League Rookie of the Year award. He was an All-Star in 1964 and 1966 and, in 1964, the first Met ever elected to start an All-Star Game. Traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 1966 season and to the San Francisco Giants in February 1968, he made his living crowding the plate and refusing to give ground on inside pitches, leading the National League in hit by pitches for seven straight seasons from 1968 through 1974 and setting the modern single-season record with 50 for Montreal in 1971. Over twelve seasons he batted .273 with 1,429 hits, and his 243 career hit by pitches stood as a post-dead-ball-era record when he retired. "Some folks give their bodies to science," he said. "I gave mine to baseball." He belongs to the Montreal Expos Hall of Fame, founded the Ron Hunt Eagles Baseball Association for college-bound players in 1987, and died on July 15, 2026, at age 85.
Sources: Wikipedia · SABR BioProject · Baseball-Reference · Baseball Almanac (1) · Baseball Almanac (2) · Baseball Almanac (3) · Retrosheet · MLB.com
Graded population (PSA & SGC)
| Grader | Total | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 1-4 | Auth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA | 238 | 3 | 33 | 124 | 45 | 17 | 13 | 3 | 0 |
| SGC | 15 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Graded population — a scarcity guide, not a price. Data as of 2026-09-04. Half grades fold down for both graders (8.5→8); PSA qualified slabs (OC, ST, PD, MC and the like) are not counted. The two checklist variations, #79 and #508, are listed under the wording PSA uses for each state.
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Related cards
Team card: #551 New York Mets
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- #167 Bill Wakefield
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Frequently asked questions
What is the 1965 Topps #285 card?
It is card #285 of the 598-card 1965 Topps Baseball set, picturing Ron Hunt of the New York Mets.
How many cards are in the 1965 Topps Baseball set?
598 cards, tracked as 600 collectible states. Numbers run from 1 to 598 with no gaps and no printed-number collisions, and two checklist cards - #79 and #508 - carry catalogued print variations that the master set counts separately.
Sources: Trading Card Database, PSA CardFacts, Cardboard Connection, BaseballCardPedia, Baseball Almanac, Baseball-Reference, the SABR BioProject and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, PSA & SGC population reports. Card data compiled and maintained by T206Cards.com. Page last updated 2026-10-11.